Procrastinators

I launched Daily Routines on a Sunday afternoon in July 2007, while procrastinating on a writing assignment due the following day. It was intended as a hobby, and for the first year and a half I had a readership of about a dozen friends, coworkers, and family members.

Then, in December 2008, Slate wrote a story about the quest for the perfect morning routine that quoted liberally from my blog. Suddenly I went from having a record of five visitors in one day to almost 18,000, and more than 80,000 visitors for the month.

Along with all of these visitors came a steady stream of comments and e-mails—including a few e-mails from editors and literary agents suggesting that I turn the blog into a book. Two weeks after the Slate article came out, I signed on with one of those agents; over Christmas vacation, I wrote a book proposal. By April 2009, after lots of back-and-forth with several editors, I signed a contract with my dream publisher, Knopf.

Now, four years later, the Daily Routines book—officially titled Daily Rituals: How Artists Work—is finally coming out. It presents the routines and working habits of 161 creative minds—among them, novelists, poets, playwrights, composers, painters, philosophers, and scientists. It is packed with anecdotes about getting up super early, staying up super late, drinking heroic amounts of coffee, taking precisely timed naps and long daily walks, and much more.

In other words, if you enjoyed the blog, I'm confident that you'll like the book even better. It comes out April 23, and can now be pre-ordered from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell's, or IndieBound.

He sticks to a strict routine, waking at 6:15 every morning. He makes breakfast for his family, takes Ella to school at 7:20 and is in the studio by 8. At 1 o'clock, he crosses the garden from the studio back to the house. The grass in the garden is uncut. Richter proudly points this out, to show that even it is a matter of his choosing, not by chance. At 1 o'clock, he eats lunch in the dining room, alone. A housekeeper lays out the same meal for him each day: yogurt, tomatoes, bread, olive oil and chamomile tea.

After lunch, Richter returns to his studio to work into the evening. ''I have always been structured,'' he explains. ''What has changed is the proportions. Now it is eight hours of paperwork and one of painting.'' He claims to waste time -- on the house, the garden -- although this is hard to believe. ''I go to the studio every day, but I don't paint every day. I love playing with my architectural models. I love making plans. I could spend my life arranging things. Weeks go by, and I don't paint until finally I can't stand it any longer. I get fed up. I almost don't want to talk about it, because I don't want to become self-conscious about it, but perhaps I create these little crises as a kind of a secret strategy to push myself. It is a danger to wait around for an idea to occur to you. You have to find the idea.'' As he talks, I notice a single drop of paint on the floor beneath one of his abstract pictures, the only thing out of place in the studio.

Begley is particularly astute on the bizarre organization of Kafka's writing day. At the Assicurazioni Generali, Kafka despaired of his twelve-hour shifts that left no time for writing; two years later, promoted to the position of chief clerk at the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute, he was now on the one-shift system, 8:30 AM until 2:30 PM. And then what? Lunch until 3:30, then sleep until 7:30, then exercises, then a family dinner. After which he started work around 11 PM (as Begley points out, the letter- and diary-writing took up at least an hour a day, and more usually two), and then "depending on my strength, inclination, and luck, until one, two, or three o'clock, once even till six in the morning." Then "every imaginable effort to go to sleep," as he fitfully rested before leaving to go to the office once more. This routine left him permanently on the verge of collapse. Yet

when Felice wrote to him...arguing that a more rational organization of his day might be possible, he bristled.... "The present way is the only possible one; if I can't bear it, so much the worse; but I will bear it somehow."

It was [Max] Brod's opinion that Kafka's parents should gift him a lump sum "so that he could leave the office, go off to some cheap little place on the Riviera to create those works that God, using Franz's brain, wishes the world to have." Begley, leaving God out of it, politely disagrees, finding Brod's wish

probably misguided. Kafka's failure to make even an attempt to break out of the twin prisons of the Institute and his room at the family apartment may have been nothing less than the choice of the way of life that paradoxically best suited him.

It is rare that writers of fiction sit behind their desks, actually writing, for more than a few hours a day. Had Kafka been able to use his time efficiently, the work schedule at the Institute would have left him with enough free time for writing. As he recognized, the truth was that he wasted time.

The truth was that he wasted time! The writer's equivalent of the dater's revelation: He's just not that into you. "Having the Institute and the conditions at his parents' apartment to blame for the long fallow periods when he couldn't write gave Kafka cover: it enabled him to preserve some of his self-esteem."

Morning routine: Because of the travel, I always have a week when I am really waking up early. I get up and start to work very quietly. I make the coffee. Then have breakfast. I get to the office before 9 a.m.

Evening routine: My wife and I will watch political shows. We are political junkies. We will eat while watching Keith Olbermann on MSNBC and end with Stephen Colbert's program on Comedy Central. Then to bed.

Procrastination technique: I work best either under pressure or by emptying my brain over the weekend. That blank state is helpful. It is like an athlete before a competition.

AMISYes. I don’t get up very early. I linger over breakfast reading
the papers, telling myself hypocritically that I’ve got to keep with what’s
going on, but really staving off the dreadful time when I have to go to the
typewriter. That’s probably about ten-thirty, still in pajamas and dressing
gown. And the agreement I have with myself is that I can stop whenever I like
and go and shave and so on. In practice, it’s not till about one or one-fifteen
that I do that—I usually try and time it with some music on the radio. Then I
emerge, and nicotine and alcohol are produced. I work on until about two or
two-fifteen, have lunch, then if there’s urgency about, I have to write in the
afternoon, which I really hate doing—I really dislike afternoons, whatever’s
happening. But then the agreement is that it doesn’t matter how little gets
done in the afternoon. And later on, with luck, a cup of tea turns up, and then
it’s only a question of drinking more cups of tea until the bar opens at six o’clock
and one can get into second gear. I go on until about eight-thirty and I always
hate stopping. It’s not a question of being carried away by one’s creative
afflatus, but saying, “Oh dear, next time I do this I shall be feeling tense
again.”

Morning routine: I'm woken by my son around 6 a.m. We'll sit
downstairs, and he'll drink milk. Then he wants to play, which goes on
until 8 a.m.

Procrastination technique: By quarter to 9, I am
upstairs in my study. Normally there are gobs of e-mails and fun stuff
like that to delay the work. Then the phone might ring. By 11 a.m., I
get down to my real work. Then I'll work with intensity until 12:30
p.m., when, in a state of exhaustion, I will retire for lunch.